My Fight for Freedom

For foreign correspondent Peter Greste, it was meant to be a routine assignment - a three week stint covering political unrest in Cairo. It spiralled into a 400 day prison ordeal, with Greste and two Al Jazeera colleagues accused of helping terrorists and spreading "false news".

The Al Jazeera case was internationally derided and condemned as a gross miscarriage of justice - "chilling, draconian... deeply disturbing," in the words of the US Secretary of State.

It's been six months since Greste was deported from jail in Egypt - and 18 months since he reported a story. But now he's finally back on the job. In a two part Foreign Correspondent special, Greste tells of his own extraordinary journey: from the mind numbing captivity of a Cairo hell-hole to the blast of freedom on a windswept Queensland beach.

"I sat down on the floor and I just remember bursting into tears, tears running down my face." - Greste after the Cairo court sentenced him to seven years in jail

Greste tells how he and his colleagues fought to keep their spirits alive - making murals from scrap tin foil, scribbling long letters on toilet paper to be smuggled out to loved ones; and always dreaming of release.

"I want that moment of explosive joy, of happiness, of a crowd... because after all of this time you want it to end with a big bang." - Greste heading home

"I sometimes understate things but I daresay 'Welcome home' would not be out of place." - Greste's father Juris on the homecoming

Peter Greste's parents and brothers reveal their torment during his incarceration - and their joy and relief on news of his deportation. His Al Jazeera colleagues Mohamed Fahmy and Baher Mohamed - who are both free on bail - also describe their time in captivity.

Their re-trial is heading towards its climax. The verdict - which could see Greste sentenced in absentia and Fahmy and Baher thrown back into prison - is due on Thursday July 30.

Transcript

plusminus

GRESTE: [On the beach, Sunshine Coast, Australia] "It's funny but I used to kite surf a lot before I went into prison and so seeing the kite surfers out there is just, just absolutely extraordinary. It's really the epitome of freedom for me. It's the ultimate liberated movement. Out there with the elements, under the sun, the sand, the surf and the sea... and so many times in prison this is where I would go. This is where I would take my mind.

As you might have heard I spent 400 days in an Egyptian prison along with my colleagues Mohamed Fahmy and Baher Mohamed. We were accused of being terrorists on charges that were trumped up and after a trial that was widely seen as a miscarriage of justice. But of course being out here feels absolutely extraordinary. It's brilliant to be free. But in Egypt we're still thought of as criminals".

Here is my dilemma. After I was deported, my colleagues were released on bail - but all of us are still on trial and so there are some things I just can't say. This is the story of how we survived, how our families fought for us and of what happens next. The verdict in our retrial is just two days away.

[Cairo, December 2013] It started as a routine assignment in Cairo. Al Jazeera had asked me to cover the bureau over the Christmas/New Year period. I was to be there for just three weeks - an easy trip for a fascinating story and in a city I'd never been to before.

Egypt was in the middle of a political crisis. Supporters of the old Muslim Brotherhood government were in the streets, protesting at what they saw as a military coup.

"We always knew that Al Jazeera had a difficult relationship with the Egyptian government. I mean there was a reason we were in the Marriott Hotel and that was because our office had been attacked and raided - trashed basically, and so we needed the hotel security".

EGYPT TELEVISION: [Airing video of arrest] "Just relax, take it easy. Close the matter. Send them to prison. Watch the video".

GRESTE: A local television station broadcast a leaked police video of a raid on our rooms at the Marriott Hotel and set it to sinister music.

MOHAMED FAHMY: [Bureau chief] "We had a waiter who rang the doorbell in the Marriott Hotel. I looked and I opened the door and suddenly there was a dozen police officers, you know, who stormed in and a camera was rolling, a video camera and photography was flashing".

GRESTE: The video was supposed to expose what the authorities called "the Marriott Cell". It showed a hotel room full of laptops, cameras and notebooks - all the unremarkable tools of a television news team.

POLICE: "Why did you choose this place?"

MOHAMED FAHMY: "I don't know. It could have been any hotel".

POLICE: "Why not an apartment? Somewhere else?"

MOHAMED FAHMY: "All correspondents work this way. They stay in hotels like Marriott and Novotel".

POLICE: "You take pictures in the street. There is no need for a hotel room".

MOHAMED FAHMY: "They just wanted to frame us as terrorists and spies, you know and it was just unbelievable".

GRESTE: As we waited on the street to be taken away, the police raided the home of our Egyptian producer, Baher Mohamed.

BAHER MOHAMED: [Producer] "It was so hard, it was so hard to feel that somebody is storming your house, raiding, destroying the doors, smashing the doors, shooting your dog and coming in - smacking into every single thing in front of you and just storming and searching and damaging and destroying everything around".

GRESTE: For the past four years Egypt has been trapped in political turmoil. In January 2011, a popular uprising forced the old dictator, Hosni Mubarak, from power. A year later, his foe, the Muslim Brotherhood's leader Mohamed Morsi won the country's first free elections. A year after that and amid a new wave of protests, the military forced the Brotherhood government out.

By the time we arrived, Morsi and most of his cabinet were in prison. The Muslim Brotherhood was accused of attacking the state.

GRESTE: [Reporting December 2013, Al Jazeera English] "By turning out in the streets today in such large numbers, these protestors are making it very clear just how determined they are to continue to defy the government".

GRESTE: We covered a protest calling for the return of the ousted president. It was one of the last stories we did before our arrest. Back then, we thought it was a mistake that would be fixed in a matter of hours.

[Peter on beach - drawing in sand] So this cell was about eight foot square. It was incredibly tiny. There was one tiny window that you couldn't see out of. There was a sink in one corner and a hole for the toilet in another. There was a door about there and in this space, there were sixteen guys. Now I was only in there for a few days and even for me the walls started to close in. It started to feel incredibly claustrophobic and frankly quite terrifying. Some of these guys had been in that cell seven hours - seven days a week, twenty four hours a day for six months. And frankly, they were losing their minds".

Soon I was transferred to the Tora complex, a sprawling set of prisons on the outskirts of Cairo. Mohamed Fahmy and producer Baher Mohamed were thrown into the Scorpion Prison, notorious as a unit for militant extremists. We all spent the first ten days in solitary confinement, allowed out only for interrogations.

As the questioning progressed, I became increasingly worried about the alleged links to terrorism. This had nothing to do with anything we'd actually reported, rather it was an attempt to intimidate all journalists working in Egypt. That's when I decided to secretly write a letter and smuggle it out.

[Reconstruction of writing the letter] So our arrest is not a mistake and as a journalist this is my battle. I can no longer pretend it will go away by keeping quiet and crossing my fingers. I have no particular fight with the Egyptian government, just as I have no interest in supporting the Muslim Brotherhood or any other group here. But as a journalist, I am committed to defending a fundamental freedom of the press that no one in my profession can credibly work without.

That letter seemed to galvanize our colleagues around the world. It created a unity of purpose amongst journalists unheard of in this fiercely competitive business.

MOHAMED ADOW: [Al Jazeera] "It's almost 40 days now since the incarceration began. We believe it's wrong".

GRESTE: In prison we heard about the campaigning of course, you can't keep that kind of thing secret, but we had no real understanding of just how massive it had all become.

[Peter at computer] "The social media campaign energized, motivated, informed millions of people around the world. I don't think frankly I would be here now if it weren't for the absolutely extraordinary social media campaign that we saw over the past year and a half".

Once the trial began, my family tag teamed in Cairo. My youngest brother Mike, burned through his annual leave, sick leave and long service leave to be there.

MIKE GRESTE: [Brother] "Apart from receiving a visit from the family, another you know added highlight to the visit is us being able to bring some sushi along to the boys which they thoroughly enjoy".

GRESTE: Once a week he'd drive to prison, delivering news, clothes and books.

MIKE GRESTE: "I took him the John Grisham book the other week and he said he read that in a day and a half so...".

GRESTE: For me, the family visits were a vital link to the outside world and also a source of great personal strength.

"The problem with prison in Egypt is that there is no structure to the day. There's no form. You're simply in a box, a concrete box. I would spend at least an hour a day sometimes two, just sitting and meditating to try and maintain some mental stability, maintain some calm, and it worked. I think I'd be crazy by now if I hadn't have had that".

By now, Baher, Fahmy and I had been moved into a cell together and as the trial progressed, it became ever more surreal. We'd swing between being amused by the sheer lunacy of the evidence and outrage at the injustice of our arrest.

MOHAMED FAHMY (in court): "All the lawyers today, made it very clear that this court is a political case".

BAHER MOHAMED: "We all heard the witnesses. They all said they were like spreading false news. We didn't see any false news at all, even the CDs they brought. They brought CDs and hard disks that belonged to Al Jazeera in the past three years and this is a good evidence like, in the past three years they didn't find one false news, okay thank you. This is a good thing for me".

GRESTE: "A lot of people have spoken about the relationship between myself and Fahmy and Baher and it's very true that after an experience like this we've become very close. We know each other very, very well indeed. But I think of this more like a blood relationship than a friendly relationship. So while we've got a lot of very strong bonds and I care very deeply about both of those guys, because of what we went through, like any family, it doesn't meant that you don't have your differences and disagreements and your rows".

Among the evidence supposed to prove that we were colluding with terrorists, a documentary I made for the BBC on Somalia - and photographs of a family holiday with my parents.For the past 35 years, this place has been the family refuge - a block of land with a house we built ourselves an hour or so out of Brisbane. It's been a bit neglected over the past year and a half.

JURIS GRESTE: "I know it's not exemplary fence mending but at the moment we just haven't got time to do exemplary work".

GRESTE: [helping father mend fence] "Of course my relationship with barbed wire and fences after Egypt has never been particularly strong".

This is where we retreat when we need a place where mobile phones and email can't reach us.

[letter on toilet paper] "So this was really the only way I was able to get stuff out, these rather tightly rolled up little strips of toilet paper tucked inside my underwear. Sometimes they got a little bit sweaty in there" [laughs].

LOIS GRESTE: "I can remember Andrew one time, way back when he went on the first trip, a couple of days went past. I said where is this damn letter? He said Mum it's six metres long. I've got to transcribe it and write it".

GRESTE: [reading from toilet roll] "This was just after, in fact this is only a couple of days after the third hearing. I write here that 'already it feels as though we're on the home stretch.' Yeah... ".

LOIS GRESTE: "Yeah".

GRESTE: "... it didn't quite work out that way. And I also went on to say 'but if there's one thing that this experience has taught me, is how elastic time really is. That now weirdly the hours, days and even weeks seem to slip by without so much as a blink. I suspect it's the homogeneity of our lives that makes one minute pretty much indistinguishable from the next so it all seems to blur into one big timeless blob. If we understood from the outset that it would take a year or six months we could set out mental clocks appropriately and pace ourselves to hit that target. But never having any idea how long we're going to have to wait is an incredibly tough psychological burden".'

In Cairo, the trial that we thought would be over within weeks, dragged on for months. We had twelve often chaotic hearings. Then on June 23rd, almost six months after our arrest, we faced a verdict.

This had been one of the most closely covered trials in Egypt's history. As we entered the case for the last time, we were overwhelmed by the crowd in court. Baher had asked his wife, by then seven months pregnant, not to come.

BAHER MOHAMED: "I was hoping that I would be cleared and in the previous visit I told my wife at last I'll be out with you. I will just go with you to the hospital and then maybe we will travel somewhere else".

GRESTE: Then I saw not one but both my brothers, Mike and Andrew, they'd come to take me home.

LOIS GRESTE: [Peter's mother back in Australia waiting for verdict] "Feeling existed, anxious and very emotional about the fact that they're all over there supporting each other".

GRESTE: We were all feeling confident. We knew we weren't criminals. The prosecutor had presented no evidence and we were all ready for freedom.

JURIS GRESTE: [Back in Australia awaiting verdict] "Let's have a prejudgement drink as a good omen".

GRESTE: The verdict, all guilty of aiding and financing a terrorist group. Seven years in prison for me and Fahmy - ten years for Baher. My head was ringing as though I'd been king-hit by a heavy-weight boxer.

WAFA ABDEL HAMID BASSIOUNI: [Mohamed Fahmy's mother] "He will keep in the prison seven years. For what? Can you, one of you tell me for what? Not only picture, tell me for what!" [distraught]

ANDREW GRESTE: "I'm gutted... devastated. I mean it's difficult to come up with words to describe how I'm feeling. It's.... definitely wasn't something I was expecting".

JULIE BISHOP: [Foreign Minister] "The Australian government is shocked at the verdict in the Peter Greste case. We are deeply dismayed by the fact that a sentence has been imposed and we are appalled by the severity of it".

GRESTE: "It was back in the silence of the cell when the enormity of it really sunk in and I remember Fahmy I think went and laid down in his bed. I sat down on the floor with my back to the wall and I just remember... I remember bursting into tears. I just remember tears running down my face. I just... and it was... it was... it was really hard, it was tough".

Once the shock of the verdict had passed, my mum and dad decided to visit. They tried to behave like tourists but Cairo felt alien and hostile. They were only allowed to come to the prison once a week.

JURIS GRESTE: "Believe me it is every bit as much hard work as it has been in Australia keeping up correspondence and dealing with lawyers in a strange country and so on, is very sapping".

GRESTE: It was always a joyless ride. The Tora prison complex is designed to be intimidating and imposing. It's hard enough for Egyptian families, let alone an elderly Australian couple trying to navigate the judicial system.

JURIS GRESTE: "Getting more and more depressed as we approach the prison. Just the mere size of the whole complex and the thought that obviously it accommodates probably thousands of people, without any joy... is just gloom making".

GRESTE: During the visits they'd try to be upbeat and positive. It didn't always work. While my family fought the legal campaign, politicians and diplomats tackled the newly elected president, Abdel Fatah al Sisi - a former military officer. He was under enormous diplomatic pressure to release us. His solution? To issue a special decree giving him the power to deport foreign prisoners.

CHRIS FLYNN: [Lawyer] "It was an outrageous and terrible injustice. I've never got a bloke out of gaol in Egypt before but I reckoned I was up for the task and so I took it on".

GRESTE: Lawyer Chris Flynn joined my family's team. He saw the decree as the opportunity to get me out of Egypt.

CHRIS FLYNN: "There was a lot of pressure on the president to right this wrong and he needed to find a way out. The decree is an extraordinary law and you know I've never come across anything quite like it. It's not a pardon".

GRESTE: "So it seems as though it was written for me".

CHRIS FLYNN: "It does, it does... and so obviously we took that as a signal as I said, that this was the way out for you".

GRESTE: But that couldn't happen while I was convicted. Everything rested on our appeal. Egypt's highest court convened on the first of January. The ruling? The original verdict was flawed and contradictory. The court ordered a retrial.

ADEL FAHMY: [Mohamed Fahmy's brother] "I was expecting nothing short of a retrial, but I was hoping for a bit more - a release. The misery continues and I hope there is a breakthrough very soon. We can't take this anymore, we really can't take this anymore".

MARWA OMARA: "We will marry in prison and we will hold our wedding vows inside the prison. I believe it's a message to the whole world that Mohamed is innocent and I believe in his innocence and it's a personal message to him that I love him and I know that he's innocent and I'll be next to him and that the prison bars will never be an obstacle for our marriage".

GRESTE: We sat in prison for another month. The Appeals court had 30 days to issue its written reasoning and appoint a new court to hear the retrial.

"On the first of February we had reached day 32. We'd still heard nothing from the Appeals court. Now I'd thought long and hard about this and I'd come to the conclusion that the authorities were playing games with us, that they had no intention of letting us go. On that day my brother Mike was due for a visit and I was going to tell him that it's time for a hunger strike".

Then without warning, without ceremony, I was released.

BAHER MOHAMED: "As soon as he knew, he came and told me. I was the first one to know. He came, sat next to me and like Baher, I'm going home, but the officers told me not to tell anybody, just that I'm going to another prison. I was absolutely happy".

GRESTE: [Peter barefoot on beach] Mike and I flew to Cyprus where I did what I'd been dreaming of for more than a year. It was the start of a long, joyous journey home. [drinks and good food on plane with Mike]

[on plane home] "I want that moment of explosive joy, of happiness, of a crowd and a lot of people talking to me and celebrating because after all of this time, you want to end it with a big bang. You want to end it with some kind of celebration".

JURIS GRESTE: "A primary school friend of Peter's way back from Sydney days turns up unannounced with two slabs of Coopers for the party. Isn't that wonderful?"

[leaving home for airport to meet Peter and Mike] "Okay we're ready to roll".

LOIS GRESTE: [in car on way to airport] "He's free. He's out".

JURIS GRESTE: "I sometimes understate things but I daresay 'welcome home' would not be out of place".

TO BE CONTINUED:

Next week the extraordinary reunion with family and friends and an overwhelming public reaction. Everyone wants to know what happened - but suddenly we have a much more serious task to deal with - getting us all off the charges and clear of another prison sentence.